Hi all,
There seems to be an interesting issue of relative freedoms and
controls here.
I recall Sharon Zukin`s intersting discussion in Culture of Cities on
the soft policing of New York Parks and the greater safety that women
and their children feel as a result. It seems that some things are
chosen as totems, without much critical analysis.
Not in Tim`s writing here but there is a real issue not about whether
people are allowed to walk. As Tim also notes, radical realignment of
what?
David Crouch
On Tue, 16 Nov 1999 09:54:14 +0000 Tim Cresswell <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Dear all
>
> I'm not sure that anti-panhandling laws constitute a radical realignment of
> public space although the type of enforcement might. Begging has been
> illegal in England since the sixteenth century as has being in public
> without money and not being able to give an account of oneself. English
> anti-vagrancy laws were imported wholesale into the United States and the
> vast majority of states had anti-vagrancy laws until around 1880 when many
> were supplemented by tramp laws that specifically made being a tramp (a
> crime of identity if ever there was one) illegal. Tramp were defined as
> pretty much the same as vagrants except that they were more mobile.
>
> Chapter 159 of the general statutes of Connecticut 1902 states for instance
> that "All transient persons who rove from place to place begging, and all
> vagrants, living without labor or visible means fo support, who stroll over
> the country without lawful occassion, shall be deemed tramps'
>
> To this very day most state have vagrancy laws on the books that resemble
> the English laws of the sixteenth century. As for trenchant critical views
> of such laws none does much better than the once Govenor Lewelling of
> Kansas who issued an order forbidding the arrest of tramps and vagrants
> for begging. This was applauded by one Elbert Hubbard who wrote
>
> 'In this country we say every man is assumed to be innocent until he proven
> guilty. This applies only to men who have money. No peaceable decent man
> with money is asked to "give an account of himself." But let him have no
> place to lay his head, and ask for a cup of cold water, immediately we may
> legally assume his guilt and drag him before the notary, who shall demand
> that he "give a satisfactory account of himself." Satisfactory to whom
> forsooth?'
>
>
> Hmmm
>
> Tim Cresswell
>
>
>
----------------------
David Crouch
Anglia Polytechnic University
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